Memories
by Guinevere137
Summary: The only reason everyone holds onto memories so tightly is because the don't change while everyone else does.


Chapter 1

Remus sat at the kitchen table, staring at a photo of Sirius and James. Lily was in background, chatting away with Peter, the two of them completely unaware they were being photographed; that that one moment in time was being captured in time and stored on a sheet of photo paper. He smiled at the sad thought, it depressed him deeply to think of such things, but with Voldemort at large once more he found it increasingly more necessary to pull out this old photo album. He didn't like how fast things moved.

It seemed like only a few days ago that this photo had been taken in Hogsmeade. It also seemed like yesterday Lily and James were murdered and Sirius had been dragged off to Azkaban. But it hadn't, that was years ago. He was older now, and married. He didn't love his wife, but he wasn't about to tell her that. She'd kill him.

He didn't love Tonks, and yet she was carrying their child. He had only loved once in his entire life. That one love was Sirius Black. James had made fun of the constantly at first, but he eventually accepted them as a couple. Peter never had.

Remus flipped the page and nearly burst into tears. This was the picture of him and Sirius; the only one James (or any of the others) would take of the two of them holding hands. The only one where Remus kiss Black's cheek and they'd laugh together. When Tonks looked at the book with him, he'd skip this page. She wouldn't be home for another two hours, so he could stare at it all he wanted. And he would.

"The only reason why everyone holds onto memories so tightly is because they don't change while everyone else does." That was what his mum had taught him, but until now he'd never paid any attention to it. Now he realized just how right she'd been.

Tears watered in his eyes, so he closed the photo album and set it aside. He couldn't let the photos, the treasured memories, get smudged with his pathetic tears. He stood and walked quietly to the bathroom where Tonks kept a box of tissues on the back of the toilet. He wiped his eyes with the corner of one of said tissues and remembered, very suddenly, what James used to say whenever he did that: "You look ridiculous you know that, Moony? Like an old witch at the grave of her dead husband who died years ago!" something like that anyway. Then James would laugh at Remus for acting like a baby and the others would join in.

Shaking his head, Remus walked back into the kitchen, intending to put the photo album back into the box under the bed in his room. However, he never did get to do that. Tonks was sitting at the table, laughing at something… a picture from the book! "What are you looking at?" he asked, his voice barley a whisper.

"This!" Tonks held up the very picture he had only just looking at. The one of Sirius and himself. The one he had always secretly prayed that she would never see.

"Oh," he muttered. "That, that was taken on a dare." Remus tried to come up with the best lie possible in five seconds. "James dared us to act like a couple in the picture, I suppose he thought it would be funny or something." Damn, he used to be able to come up with lies a whole lot better that, never as good as the lies James or Sirius could come up with, but better than that one. He was out of practice.

"It's cute," Tonks muttered thoughtfully. "James was right, it is funny. You must have a whole bunch of cool memories like this from those days." She was right, the more the he thought about it, the more he realized that he did in fact have great memories of them. The Marauders. He sat beside his wife and, for the first time in a long time, smiled.

"Yes, as a matter a fact I do, one for each photograph in this album" he told her, drawing the book over to him and opening to the first page. "Plus more." For the rest of the night, Remus sat beside Tonks and told her every one of those stories. She listed intently to every word he spoke, laughing at all the stories. They had a wonderful evening. For once.

So yes, "the only reason why everyone holds onto memories is because they don't change while everyone else does." Just look back at the memories with a smile, it's a much more pleasant experience.


End file.
